EFFECTS OF VIEWING MEDIA SEX

EFFECTS OF VIEWING MEDIA SEX

Although many people might wish it otherwise, sex—even very explicit sex—apparently does sell. Sexually oriented media, print, broadcast and internet, are highly profitable, and this fact has ramifications for all media. However, since this economic issue is not the focus of this book, we turn now to the various psychological effects (see Gunter, 2001; Harris & Scott, 2002; Linz & Malamuth, 1993; Lyons, Anderson, & Larson, 1994; and the papers in Greenberg, Brown, & Buerkel-Rothfuss, 1993, and Zillmann and Bryant, 1989, for reviews of the literature on the effects of viewing sexual media).

Arousal

A fairly straightforward effect of sex in media is sexual arousal, the drive that energizes or intensifies sexual behavior. Sexually oriented media such as magazines and videos do arouse people sexually, both in terms of self-rating of arousal level and physiological measures such as penile tumescence (Eccles, Marshall, & Barbaree, 1988; Malamuth & Check, 1980a; Schaefer & Colgan, 1977), vaginal changes (Sintchak & Geer, 1975), and thermography (Abramson, Perry, Seeley, Seeley, & Rothblatt, 1981). Overall, men tend to be aroused by sexual media more than women are (Malamuth, 1996; Murnen & Stockton, 1997), although there is some evidence that women may be more aroused by sexual media developed by and for women and thus not portraying sex from an extreme hypermasculine fantasy (Mosher & Maclan, 1994; Quackenbush, Strassberg, & Turner, 1995). Sexual violence is particularly arousing to sex offenders and much less so to normal men, unless the victim is portrayed as being aroused by the assault; these findings are discussed in more detail later in the chapter.

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Sexual arousal to stimuli not naturally evoking such a response may be learned through classical conditioning. This process could account for the vast individual differences in what specific stimuli arouse people sexually. Through our different experiences, we have all been conditioned to different stimuli through their associations with those we love. Because of its association with a particular person, someone is aroused by a certain perfume or cologne, type of clothing, or specific behaviors.

Contrary to what one might expect, the degree of arousal is not necessarily highly correlated with the degree of explicitness of the media. Sometimes one is actually more aroused by a less sexually explicit story than

a more explicit one (e.g., Bancroft & Mathews, 1971). Censoring out a sex scene may actually make a film more arousing, because viewers can fill in their own fantasies. Sexual arousal is highly individual. When people are allowed to use their own imaginations to construct the ending of a romantic scene, they are more likely to construct a reality that is more arousing to them personally than if they view someone else’s idea of what is arousing, There is some validity to the old truism that the most important sex organ is the brain.

Attitudes and Values

A large class of effects of media sex has to do with effects on attitudes and values. We clearly have come a long way from the days where Lucy and Ricky Ricardo on I Love Lucy had to have twin beds and referred to her expectant state as “having a baby,” never as “pregnant,” but there are still firm standards that no network or mainstream cable TV shows dare cross, such as frontal nudity or explicit sexual intercourse.

Standards for television are more conservative than for radio, which is in turn more conservative than the recording industry. These differences are especially clear in terms of rock and rap lyrics. When Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in the 1960s, they had to change the line “Let’s spend the night together” to “Let’s spend some time together.” When Jagger performed this line, he did so with exaggerated gesture and body language to communicate his attitude about the censoring. Concern has continued ever since, such as when a song moves from the more permissive radio to the more conservative television, as in the case of MTV. Some of the strongest rap and heavy metal lyrics never even make it to radio, but are widely available to youth on CD or the Internet.

In exploring sexual attitudes and values, we now turn to four specific value issues.

Sexual Details in the News. How explicit should the media be in reporting news of sex-crime trials? When is the public’s right to know

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overshadowed by its right to standards of good taste? When does reporting turn into voyeurism? Consider some examples.

A small city is the scene of a child sexual molestation trial involving a prominent businessman and two 13-year-old boys. Each day’s court proceedings are reported in great detail in front-page stories in the local newspaper, always identifying the accused but never the boys. Sexually oriented entertainment involving pornography and alcohol in the man’s home was described in detail, along with extensive direct quotes from the testimony: “He rubbed our butts in the shower,” “He called me to where he was sitting and told me to play with his penis,” “He also made me [and the other boy] lay on the floor and have oral sex with each other while he watched.” Other episodes such as the man asking the boys to reach inside his underwear and squeeze his penis hard were also explicitly described.

Predictably, this coverage provoked some community comment, although even the most outraged people nevertheless always managed to read the articles. Although no one defended the events that had occurred, some argued that young readers should not be exposed to such explicit descriptions in the newspaper. Others countered, however, by saying that such events are serious and need to be reported in detail to show everyone how horrible they are and thus increase commitment to ensure that they would not happen again. Both sides made strong value-oriented justifications about their positions on publication of this information.

In the early 1990s there were two celebrated date-rape trials of men of some notoriety. In the first, John and Ted Kennedy’s nephew William Kennedy Smith was accused of raping a single mother at the Kennedy estate in Palm Beach, Florida. In the second trial, boxing heavyweight champion Mike Tyson was accused of raping a Miss Black America contestant whom

he had met and invited to his hotel room. Both trials were broadcast on cable (with faces of victims blanked out) and were heavily covered in all the news media. In both trials, the basic legal question was whether there was consent. Viewers heard questions like, “Did you ejaculate into her mouth?” and “Did you have an erection?” and the answers to them.

One of the most celebrated cases of sexually explicit language in the news came with the release in September 1998 of U.S. President Bill Clinton’s grand jury testimony in the Monica Lewinsky case. The critical legal, and potentially impeachable, question here was whether the President had perjured himself in grand jury testimony about the specific sexual behaviors. The videotapes and news commentary on them had the look of both high political drama and sleazy tabloid reporting. Parents were in a quandary as to how to explain these matters to their children. Many lamented the depth to which news reporting had fallen, but no one quite knew what to do about it. Such a story involved the leader of the free world in a possibly impeachable offense and thus could not be ignored.

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Although such sexually explicit language would never be accepted on prime time entertainment programming, because these stories were news their use was less controversial. Still, however, it caused some concern, especially insofar as many people watch TV news and read the newspaper for entertainment purposes.

Premarital Sex. Having sex before marriage is openly discussed on TV news and entertainment shows today, at least superficially. However, it is often traditional values that are affirmed in the end, especially in story lines involving youth. A teenager may openly consider having sex with a boyfriend or girlfriend and discuss it openly with family and friends. In the end, however, more often than not, the teenager decides that he or she is not ready and chooses to abstain. Even when the decision is affirmative, however, there is considerable moralizing and prior discussion of the behavior, often with parents. Moreover sometimes there is clear regret afterwards. In such cases, traditional values are more or less affirmed.

In contrast to this moral angst of teen decisions about premarital sex, between adults it appears to be a nonissue. Dramatic TV shows and movies seem to presuppose a norm of early sexual activity on the part of adult dating couples, usually with little if any concern about either moral propriety or protection against pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases. Premarital sex is often portrayed as accepted and noncontroversial with little indication of either party struggling with the decision. In fact, there is seldom any discussion by either party about whether that is right, whether it is too soon in the relationship, and so forth. Only in story lines with adolescents does it seem to be considered a moral issue. Premarital sex is thus treated very conservatively in regard to teens and very permissively in regard to adults. See Box 10.2 for a very unusual case where a sitcom story line involving the consequences of premarital sex caused a national political furor.

Extramarital Sex. In television and movies, extramarital sex is a common occurrence; the 9,200 scenes of suggested sexual intercourse shown each year on TV occur 5 to 32 times as often outside of marriage as inside of it (Greenberg, et al., 1993; Kunkel, et al., 2002). Depending on the situation, it may be treated farcically or seriously. If treated seriously, it may carry the implicit message that adultery is okay, or at least that it does not have terribly serious consequences, or it may convey the message that adultery has serious repercussions for all concerned. The effect on viewers may be very different in these two cases. If treated farcically, it may discourage taking seriously the consequences of marital infidelity.

The first shows that come to mind are soap operas, where adultery is a frequent theme, even an accepted way of life for many of the characters. In terms of values, both approval and condemnation come through at different

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times. A sympathetic character who is trapped in an unhappy marriage uses an affair as a relatively healthy outlet for her needs. The inevitable pain and hurt resulting from the adultery may or may not be dealt with in the plot line to any significant degree.

BOX 10.2

THE VICE PRESIDENT VERSUS MURPHY BROWN

On May 18, 1992, the sitcom Murphy Brown aired what turned out to be

a more memorable than expected season finale featuring the birth of the baby of single female news anchor Murphy Brown. The day after the TV birth, then-U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle made a political speech lamenting the nation’s poverty of values. In this speech he referred to the bad example set by character Murphy Brown in “having a child alone, mocking the importance of fathers, by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another lifestyle choice” (Dan Quayle, 1992, p. 20). Aside from the irony of this comment coming from a leader very outspoken in his opposition to legal abortion, the comment was interesting in highlighting the depth of emotion evoked by a sitcom portrayal. President George H.W.Bush, network executives, and many political leaders and columnists (and of course many humorists) commented extensively on the issue in subsequent weeks. What was it about Murphy Brown having

a baby that inspired so much feeling? Why didn’t these critics complain about all of the sex on soap operas or, for that matter, all of the real children born out of wedlock every day to single parents far less capable than Murphy Brown?

Although Quayle’s detractors chided him for making such a big deal out of a sitcom plot, they too may have missed the point. So what if Murphy Brown is not a real person, and no one ever had actual sex to produce that fictitious baby? A TV character has a reality and an impact on real people that most real people do not. In some sense, both the vice president and his critics were affirming the thesis of this book.

Nor did the story end there. On the fall 1992 premiere of Murphy Brown, the plot revolved around new fictitious mom Murphy seeing a real news report of Dan Quayle criticizing her moral example. Her office is besieged with reporters asking for reactions. Although staying secluded for awhile, Murphy eventually made an on-air editorial response to the vice president. Subsequent news reports told of the fictional program’s response to the real criticism by Quayle. Quayle even sent a real baby gift of a stuffed Republican elephant to the fictitious baby. Fantasy and reality had never become so blurred.

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What is the perceived reality constructed from viewing such shows? In a study of cultivation effects of soap opera viewing by college students, Buerkel-Rothfuss and Mayes (1981) found that heavy viewing of soap operas was positively correlated with higher estimates of the percentages of people having affairs, divorces, abortions, and illegitimate children, although it was unrelated to their perception of how many people were happily married. Bryant and Rockwell (1994) showed effects of heavy viewing of sexually oriented TV shows on adolescent’s moral judgments. Other research using a uses and gratifications approach showed that the motives and purposes of viewing must also be considered (Carveth & Alexander, 1985; Greenberg, et al, 1982; Perse, 1986). The perceived reality constructed from such shows apparently depends not only on the program content, but also on the viewer’s motives and uses of the medium, as well as parental values and parent-child discussion and co-viewing.

Just as extramarital affairs are presented as common, sometimes marital sex is actually denigrated. For example, one episode of the family sitcom Married With Children had the father eye his wife dressed very seductively and say, “Geez, if I weren’t married to you, I’d really be turned on about now!” The message is clear: sex within marriage is boring, uninteresting, or otherwise devalued. The good stuff lurks elsewhere.

AIDS Education and Birth Control. Although we accept great amounts of implied or semi-explicit sex on TV, even after the onset of AIDS in the mid-1980s, birth control ads were for a long time seen as too controversial for most U.S. television, although such ads had appeared regularly in magazines for years. It is as if the action of having sexual intercourse is acceptable if done in the heat of a passionate moment, but that planning for it is somehow unseemly or dirty. This communicates a potentially dangerous reality! The teen pregnancy rate is far higher in the United States than in any other industrialized country, and such rates elsewhere fell dramatically after media campaigns that included televised birth control ads. It is an interesting paradox that all sorts of nonmarital sex, much of which would clearly be against the personal values of most Americans, were considered acceptable for story content, but that the use of birth control, a practice consistent with the values and practice of most citizens, was seen as too controversial to advertise or to even mention in story lines. Thus, we see another paradox of fairly extreme permissiveness in regard to nonmarital media sex coexisting with extreme conservatism in regard to birth control and protection. Why are premarital and extramarital sex so acceptable but birth control and a reasonable concern about acquiring sexually transmitted diseases not?

The spread of AIDS has heightened the discussion of such issues. As AIDS spread beyond the gay and drug cultures in the late 1980s, the general population in many countries became concerned and alarmed. The common

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introduction of AIDS education into schools suggests that fear of AIDS (and death) was gradually becoming stronger than fear of exposing children to sexual information. In terms of media, the advertising of condoms had cautiously crept into some cable channels like MTV and some large markets by the late 1990s. In terms of entertainment programming, story lines continued to portray very casual attitudes toward nonmarital sex and its consequences, especially among adults. Although there have recently been increasing numbers of story lines indicating some concern about AIDS or the use of protection (so called safe sex), that is still much more the exception than the rule.

One concern is a desensitization to certain expressions of sexuality deemed by others to be inappropriate. For example, sitcoms showing teenagers considering being sexually active may contradict and thus weaken family-taught values that prohibit premarital sex. Car magazines selling shock absorbers by showing a bikini-clad woman held in mock bondage by a giant shock absorber may desensitize readers about violence toward women.

Sometimes the media may actually change one’s values or attitudes, rather than merely desensitizing or reinforcing an existing one. It may be that teenage boys watching one of the Home Improvement sons as he considers having sex with his girlfriend may also come to adopt those values. This is especially likely to happen if the TV characters holding those values are respected characters with whom viewers identify. Sexual promiscuity by a prostitute character is less likely to influence the values of a viewer than promiscuity by a respected suburban wife and mother.

Another concern about the effects on values and attitudes is that sexually oriented media may encourage people not to take sexual issues as seriously as they should. When a sex magazine has a regular cartoon called Chester the Molester featuring a child molester, many argue that this is an inappropriately light treatment of an extremely serious subject. A Penthouse story “Soothing Private Ryan” featured a barmaid putting a condom over the private’s privates, in a spoof of the serious war movie Saving Private Ryan. One article in a sex magazine aimed at male teenagers was entitled “Good Sex with Retarded Girls”; this too is open to such criticism. Although few would be likely to argue that sex should never be comedic, there are for most people some sexual subjects that do not seem appropriate for light treatment.

Sometimes a comedic treatment of sex can send a serious message. When the father on Married With Children chastises his daughter for receiving a bad grade, he is relieved because “at least it was in sex education.” Ironically, this sexually permissive sitcom confirmed a very conservative, and in this case unfounded, belief that knowledge about sex and contraception leads to promiscuity. When a car ad features two women discussing whether men drive big cars to compensate for the size of their penises (“I wonder what he’s got under the hood”), they send a message

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about what is important about men in the eyes of women (Leo, in Strasburger, 1995).

One type of value of particular concern involves attitudes toward women. One of the major criticisms of traditional pornography is that it is antiwomen in an ideological sense. It is usually women, not men, who are the playthings or victims of the opposite sex. Although this concern spans the gamut of sexual content in media, it is particularly leveled at sexual violence. What are teenage boys first learning about sex going to think that women want when they see a picture of a jackhammer in a woman’s vagina as the opening photo to a story called “How to Cure Frigidity”? When Hustler magazine runs a photo spread of a gang rape turning into an orgy, showing the women appearing to be aroused by the assault, what is being taught about women and their reactions to forcible sex? Research examining this question is discussed in detail later in the chapter.

Finally, in regard to values and attitudes, people sometimes complain that media sex, especially the more explicit varieties, removes some of the mystique, some of the aura, from what is a very mysterious, almost sacred, activity This argument holds that sex is very private and more meaningful and more fun if it is not so public. This is a hard concern to articulate, and even harder to refute or test empirically, but it is one often expressed.

Research on Media Effects on Sexual Attitudes. Several studies have shown effects on attitudes and values about sex as a result of exposure to nonviolent sexually explicit materials. After seeing slides and movies of beautiful female nudes engaged in sexual activity, men rated their own partners as being less physically endowed, although they reported undiminished sexual satisfaction (Weaver, Masland, & Zillmann, 1984). In another study, men reported loving their own mates less after seeing sexually explicit videos of highly attractive models (Kenrick, Gutierres, & Goldberg, 1989). Men who saw a pornographic video responded more sexually to a subsequent female interviewer than those seeing a control video, although this result only held for men holding traditional gender schemas (McKenzie- Mohr & Zanna, 1990). All of these studies show significant attitude changes after a very limited exposure to sexual media.

Using a paradigm of showing participants weekly films and testing them

1 to 3 weeks later, Zillmann and Bryant (1982, 1984) found that participants seeing the sexually explicit films overestimated the frequency of sexual practices like fellatio, cunnilingus, anal intercourse, sadomasochism, and bestiality, relative to perceptions of a control group seeing nonsexual films. This may reflect the cognitive heuristic of availability, whereby we judge the frequency of occurrence of various activities by the ease with which we can generate examples (S.Taylor, 1982; Tversky & Kahneman, 1973, 1974). Recent vivid media instances thus lead to an overestimation of such

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occurrences in the real world and a perceived reality substantially at odds with actual reality.

Using the same methodology that was used in their 1982 and 1984 studies, Zillmann and Bryant (1988a, 1988b) found effects of this perceived reality on attitudes about real people. Participants seeing the explicit films reported, relative to a control group, less satisfaction with the affection, physical appearance, sexual curiosity and sexual performance of their real- life partners. They also saw sex without emotional involvement as being relatively more important than the control group did. They showed greater acceptance of premarital and extramarital sex and lesser evaluation of marriage and monogamy. They also showed less desire to have children and greater acceptance of male dominance and female submission. Results generally did not differ for men versus women or college students versus nonstudents.

The medium may make a difference. Dermer and Pyszczynski’s (1978) male participants were told to think about their mates before reading some explicit passages about a woman’s sexual fantasies. They later rated their own partner as more sexually attractive. This inconsistency with the Zillmann and Bryant results may be due to specific procedural aspects of the research, particular materials used, or psychological differences in responses to print versus video material. Nonpictorial descriptions of sex in words in the print medium (e.g., the Penthouse Advisor column) may be more conducive to fantasizing about one’s own partner, whereas photographic sex may encourage unfavorable comparison to that person.

The sexual material need not be explicit or graphic to affect attitudes. Bryant and Rockwell (1994) found that, compared to controls, teenagers who watched a heavy diet of highly sexual prime time programs showed an influence on their judgments of the degree of sexual impropriety or of how much the victim had been wronged, although these effects were greatly attenuated by a clear and well-defined family value system, active critical viewing, and open discussion within the family.

Behavioral Effects

A second large class of effects is effects on behavior. On the one hand, sexual media may actually teach new behaviors. As part of sex therapy, a couple may buy a sex manual like The Joy of Sex in order to learn new sexual positions or behaviors that they had not tried before. New behaviors are not always so benign, however. One issue of Penthouse contained a series of photographs of Asian women bound with heavy rope, hung from trees, and sectioned into parts. Two months later an 8-year-old Chinese girl in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, was kidnapped, raped, murdered, and left hanging from a tree limb (New York Times, 1985,

Teaching New Behaviors.

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cited in Final Report, 1986, p. 208). Of course, such examples are not commonplace, and definitively demonstrating a causal relationship in such cases is difficult, but the juxtaposition is nonetheless disturbing.

Disinhibition of Known Behaviors. Erotic material may also disinhibit previously learned behavior, as when the viewing of TV’s treatment of premarital sex disinhibits a viewer’s inhibition against engaging in such behavior. Watching a rape scene where a woman is portrayed as enjoying being assaulted may weaken some men’s moral prohibitions on committing such a crime. This is of particular concern given some evidence suggesting that a surprisingly large number of college men reported that they might commit rape if they were sure they would not be caught (Check, 1985; Malamuth, Haber, & Feshbach, 1980).

Sex Crimes. One of the main concerns about a behavioral effect of viewing sexually explicit materials is that such viewing may have a relationship to sex crimes. There have been many studies looking at rates of crimes like rape, exhibitionism, and child molestation, relative to changes in the availability of sexually explicit materials. Drawing scientifically sound general conclusions has been difficult, however. Court (1977, 1982, 1984) argued that there is in fact a correlation between availability of sexually explicit materials and certain sex crimes. Court claimed that earlier studies, especially the Kutchinsky (1973) study claiming a drop in reported sex crimes in Denmark after liberalization of pornography restrictions in the 1960s, were not really valid, due to an inappropriate lumping of rape with nonviolent acts of voyeurism, indecent exposure, and homosexual sex.

Most Western nations have experienced a large increase in both the availability of sexually explicit media and the rise in reported rapes in the last 30 years. However, Court (1984) presented some data from two Australian states that showed a sharp increase in rape reports in South Australia, but not Queensland, after state pornography laws were liberalized in South Australia in the early 1970s. A comparable downturn in reported rapes occurred temporarily in Hawaii between 1974 and 1976 during a temporary imposition of restraints on sexually explicit media. For an interesting apparent counterexample, see Box 10.3.

BOX 10.3